"Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it."

(Hehe - considering when I last wrote a proper entry on this blog, you might want to use my typical Facebook posts as guidance instead.)Current Location:Lancaster

Alignment:True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:Halflings are clever, capable and resourceful survivors. They are notoriously curious and show a daring that many larger people can't match. They can be lured by wealth but tend to spend rather than hoard. They prefer practical clothing and would rather wear a comfortable shirt than jewelry. Halflings stand about 3 feet tall and commonly live to see 150.

Class:Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

09:40 am - CheatingWrite something. You need 500 words. It’s a self-imposed goal, not an Archer’s Goon-style mystical requirement. It’s over 180,000 words at the end of the year. Or, more like 120-130,000 at the current rate. Even so, that’s a novel finished. Score. Well, first draft, anyway, but that’s the bulk of the work over.

The problem is that you’re stuck. You’ve got the plot down as far as the siege of the hotel goes, but after that it’s all pretty vague. There’s armoured cars, paladins and lots of deep snow in Thule, but no actual plot. You’re still not entirely sure if there’s going to be a big showdown between wussy Edmund Fisher and the big bad… who, incidentally, you haven’t named yet. The Colonel. Sounds like a guy who fries chicken.

05:20 pm - I have a dream... of little children on spikesWoke up at about 11 this morning (I'm on night shift sleeping patterns), having had a rather creepy dream. Lentil's post, in which she coincidentally mentioned dreams of an apocalypse, reminded me of it.

Okay, in summary:

I was writing a review of a film about a paedophile who lived in a typical suburban street, albeit ruined and weed-covered in the aftermath of the end of the world.

The film was called something like The Paedophile in the Pink Shirt, because he was this grotesque, creepy, fat guy in a manky pink shirt. I think he was called Freddy, or possibly I'm just confusing him with Freddie Krueger, that other dream-inhabiting child molester.

At some point, the viewpoint changed to within the film, rather than watching it on a screen, because, you know, dreams work like that.

So you've got this brick building (a substation or something like that) with something about 'sweet little angels' daubed on the wall in blood. And loads of iron rods driven into the ground, and about a dozen little boys, about 7 or 8 years old, wearing a school uniform I've just realised is identical to my own primary school's, chucked off the top onto them. Miscellaneous dead or dying children. Way to go, id.

Now, here's the thing, Freddy the pink-shirted paedophile wasn't responsible for this. It was a post-apocalyptic society gone mad that had killed them all in a frenzy of self-destruction. Something to do with sparing them life in the aftermath, presumably.

Freddy was actually trying to save the children, in his own twisted and insane fashion. He had a small warehouse with loads of little curtained off alcoves that bring to mind the word 'kennel', for some reason. He kept them in those.

The viewpoint character in the film (i.e. where I was seeing it all from by this point) was a small dog, similar in appearance to the one from Spaced, but a little smaller. In fact, it might have actually been the one that nuzzled around us early on at the picnic on Friday night...

This dog could talk. In fact, it even said "Woof, bloody woof... are we going to get sued for that?"

The dog's role within the film was to grant Freddy redemption from his self-loathing and whatnot. He was having a hard time persuading Freddy to accept him as a friend, because Freddy couldn't see what he wanted with a talking dog in the post-apocalypse.

"What else can you do?" he asked the dog.

So the dog dashes into one of the kennels, to where a long-dead and mummified little boy was curled up on the floor (oh yeah, did I forget to mention that Freddy sourced his pet children from off the spikes?) and dashed back out again with a femur in his mouth.

The dog sits there, wagging his tail in front of Freddy, Freddy pats him on the head, and the dog trots off after his new friend.

...so yeah, that's what very occasionally pops up from the depths of my id.Current Mood:shocked